Dr. Francis Collins, who managed the National Institutes of Health for more than a decade and continued his career at the agency after deciding as director in 2021, resigned.
Pool / Getty Images / Getty Images
hide
tilting legend
Pool / Getty Images / Getty Images
Dr. Francis Collins, the former legendary director of the National Institutes of Health, retired, learned NPR.
CollinsWho informed the NIH on Friday of his decision, did not specify the reasons for his departure. But his retirement comes when the largest public funder in the world of biomedical research is agitation under the Trump administration, faced with cuts and dismissals.
“I loved being used by this invigorating extraordinary institution for 32 years.” Collins wrote in a press release dated Saturday.
Music, religion … and science
Collins, a geneticist playing the guitar who discovered genes for a certain number of diseases and directed the historical project of the human genome which has mapped the human genetic plan, is a rare figure of the scientific world. Evangelical Christian, Collins has adopted that science and religion could coexist.
“I will continue to devote my life to other ways to seek knowledge and improve health, to cure illnesses and to reduce suffering, and to do what I can to collect our fractured communities around the shared values of love, truth, goodness and faith.”
Collins joined the NIH in 1993 and directed the agency from 2009 to 2021 under three presidents of the two parties. He resigned as director of NIH in 2021, but remained in his agency laboratory.
But Collins and Dr. Anthony FauciThe long -standing chief of the National Institute of Infectious Allergies and Diseases was bitterly criticized by certain members of the Congress and others during and after the pandemic on locking, masks and origins of the virus.
Collins’ retirement was in effect on Friday. The NIH did not publish a declaration.
Dr. Ashish Jha sent an email to NPR about the news: “Francis Collins is one of the most important scientific leaders of our time,” wrote Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health Health who was coordinator of the response of President Bide Biden-19. “As a scientist and as a leader of NIH, he helped inaugurate the era of genomic medicine and so many remedies that we see now are due to his vision of what the cartography of the human genome could accomplish.”
Jha also noted: “There were criticism of his leadership during the pandemic and no one has perfectly managed things, but he gathered the scientific forces of the NIH to help us launch a vaccine in record time,” wrote Jha in an email at NPR. “We all owe Dr. Francis a great debt of gratitude.”
“Francis was a stellar scientist and a passionate defender of basic and translational biomedical research,” said Dr. George Daley, the dean of the Harvard Medical School, in an email at NPR. “His visionary leadership and tireless efforts have maintained the NIH as a leading government institution, obtaining the support of the two political parties in Washington. His departure is a huge loss for the federal government and the American biomedical business.”
The future of NIH
NIH is one of the federal agencies in shock from the Trump administration campaign to reduce the federal government. NIH lost About 1,200 Of the 18,000 agency employees in dismissals so far. Other senior leaders have recently left.
“While I leave NIH, I want to express my gratitude and my love for men and women with whom I worked side by side for so many years. They are individuals of extraordinary intellectual, altruistic and workers, generous and compassionate.
The Trump administration is also trying to restrict the NIH granting process. The NIH finances nearly $ 48 billion in scientific research up to nearly 50,000 grants to more than 300,000 researchers in more than 2,500 universities, medical schools and other institutions.
The administration wants to cap the rate that the NIH pays Indirect costs of medical research at 15%. Scientists say the ceiling could paralyze medical research. A federal judge in Boston decides if the ceiling can move forward.
Dr Jay BhattacharyaA health economist at the University of Stanford who criticized the NIH, faces his confirmation from the Senate on Wednesday to take over the agency.